SUBJECT: Greetings
Hi There... I'm back after a 8 month hiatus from the network...
SUBJECT: TCS Discussions
I'm excited by the discussions about TCS. Does this mean that people are
playing it, or are interested in playing it? Anyone want to play over the net?
SUBJECT: Pirates
I'm a firm believer that Pirates will always exist given: A: something worth
stealing, and B: someplace to hide. I guess everyone here knows that 'space is
big, *really* big'. No Matter *HOW* big the Imperial Fleet it, there will be
someplace to hide, especially with being able to pop out with the jump drive.
No Fleet is big enough to search all of space and worlds within say jump 6,
including empty space in between systems, the best place for pirate bases.
Anyways, I doubt that chasing pirates is an *Imperial* Fleet job. And any ship
over 2,000 Tons OT or so will be overkill; A 100,000 Ton will not be very
usefull in a search and destroy. Maybe the Destroy part, but by then the
pirates will be long gone. Most likely dealing with pirates will be left to
the locals, a Coast Guard equivilent or some such.
I can make a bigger case for pirates not having anything worthwhile to steal.
If the average free merchant can't make ends meet, what makes you think that
a pirate can. Sure, pirate cargos are 'free', but you do have very frequent,
very expensive repairs to your ships.
If anyone remembers the discussions a year ago on trade, I argued that trade
would be only of exceptional items which cannot be produced locally, rather
then of run of the mill commodities, spacefaring being so expensive. We have
run of the mill shipping today, because it's ... well, run of the mill,
common, boring and cheap. If you want star travel to be adventurous, it will
be expensive and exceptional.
The only piracy I could ever justify, given the high cost of shipping was,
piracy of shipping, hijacking et al. The best payoff was to hijack a ship from
within. The second was to have a big enough ship, and attack a small enough
ship so as to cow your victim into surrendering, and be able to jump out with a
whole, or nearly whole ship. If they put up a big enough fight, and you have
to disable it, you better have a big enough hold to hold it, or some way to
jump it out as dead weight. Otherwise, you will only get whatever you can
strip from it in the few hours you have before reinforcement come.
Of course, safe traders will stay near the jump point if there is a designated
one, and near the main planet, and *maybe* the gass giant, where the navy/coast
guard/high guard is. These traders will be virtually safe from random piracy,
but not as chosen targets if word gets out that they have a certain cargo
someone wants badly. Any ships that go outside of these protected spots will
be fair game. And there will be some, occasionally who are in the wrong place
at the wrong time.
I view pirates as being a pretty much opportunistic, if they are in the right
place at the right time with the right victim, they attack. They don't
generally wait in a particular place waiting for a target. If it's a place
heavily travelled enough to make it worthwhile for them to wait, pretty soon it
will be worthwhile for to be protected. Of course it's a dance, where the
traders try to find safe passage, pirates try to find targets in weak spots of
the defense, and the government tries to shore up weak spots.
Jim Baranski